


coming soon to a theater near you!

by capmackie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, The Author Projecting Her Love for Sam Wilson through 1700 Words of Nonsense, romantic comedy tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-25 00:08:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20367370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capmackie/pseuds/capmackie
Summary: At no point in any of his three lifetimes did Bucky plan on his life turning into a fucking romantic comedy.





	coming soon to a theater near you!

At no point in any of his three lifetimes did Bucky plan on his life turning into a fucking romantic comedy. 

Not as James, the dutiful soldier or as The Winter Soldier, Hydra's best asset or as Bucky, a regular civilian but here he is, begrudgingly.   


It's all Sam's fault. 

***

Bucky just doesn’t understand the fascination with romantic comedies, _ahem_ rom coms, as Sam points out; finds himself frequently complaining about the overused tropes, calling out the plot of each one Sam forces him to watch much to Sam’s displeasure.   
  
It’s not his fault that the conclusion is often telegraphed out so plainly that even a child knows that at some point, Harry’s gonna marry Sally.   
  
And if Sam really had a problem with Bucky's commentary, maybe he'll stop adding the genre to their Wednesday movie nights or stop cuddling up to him as soon as the movie starts --Bucky hopes, _prays_ that Sam never stops cuddling up to him as soon as the movie starts.--  
  
But anyways.   
  
Each movie, no matter how much it tries to differentiate itself from the millions of others like it, follows all of the same beats:  
  
1) Guy meets Girl  
2) They fall in love but are too stupid to realize it  
3) Guy performs some grand gesture of love, tells the girl how he feels and then they kiss and people applaud around them as doves fly into the night’s sky  
4) Happily. Ever. After.   
  
It’s stupid and dumb and Bucky just doesn’t understand the fascination with such nonsense.   
  
He doesn’t understand it until he falls in love with Sam.   
  
The same Sam who loves romantic comedies and claps — he actually fucking claps — when the protagonist manages to bypass airport security to confess his love on the tarmac. The very same Sam who gets teary-eyed whenever he hears the first notes of ‘My Heart Will Go On’.   
  
Granted, Titanic isn’t a romantic comedy but you get the point.   
  
Sam’s a lover at heart, loves everything about love itself. Loves how love can heal someone whole, how it can pick someone up, loves how love can knock someone off their feet.   
  
Sam’s love is reminiscent of him, loud and bold and bright. Sam’s love is the truth; an oasis in the middle of a hot desert.  
  
Anyone who has ever come within a ten-mile radius of Sam has fallen in love with him; friends, colleagues, even people in passing find themselves smitten at the handsome guy with a smile that could light up a planet.   
  
Bucky’s no exception.   
  
It's for that reason and that reason only that he lets himself be subjected to whatever tearjerker Sam's so insistent on watching, and if he buys a copy of 'The Notebook' for his own collection, stashing it between 'Terminator' and 'The Incredibles', well, that's no one's business.   
  
**

  
Bucky doesn't even realize that he is indeed starring in his own romantic comedy -why are they called comedies? No one even tells a joke- until the next movie night.   
  
The movie's queued, something with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, and Bucky's finding it hard to pay attention to the plot when Sam's pressed so close to him, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh.   
  
Bucky's proud of himself, watches about 20 minutes of the movie -something about friends with benefits- before he's making a move on Sam, effectively distracting him too.   
  
They don't come up for air until the credits are rolling and Bucky counts the night as a win until Sam is restating the movie and moving to the other end of the couch so they can actually get through it this time.   
  
Well fuck.   
  
Now that he's practically being forced to watch 'No Strings Attached', no wait, that's the other movie that came out in the same year with the exact same plot, Bucky can't help but draw parallels to the protagonists and him and Sam's own tryst.   
  
But there's nothing there, it's not like some kind of relationship is gonna bloom from two friends casually hooking up, that's absurd.  
  
That exists solely in movies and this is real life and he and Sam have more restraint than that, right?  
  
They barely like each other, just enough to fuck, there's no way they'd fall in love.   
  
Bucky's almost convinced himself that it's beyond the realm of possibility that anything more can come out of their _situationship_ when Sam, who put the movie back on out of spite, barely paying any attention to it as his eyes slowly start to close, snaps him out of his thoughts, asking if Bucky is ready to go to bed.   
  
"To your, uh, bed?", Bucky sputters.   
  
"To the bed that we've been sharing for the past six months, Frozone", Sam quips.   
  
Oh. Right.   
  
***  
  
They’ve completed step one of the rom-com trope list, meeting each other, and even something as simple as that wasn’t so simple at all. Nothing ever really is between them.   
  
Now Bucky finds himself straddling a weird line regarding the second trope; he knows he loves Sam, realizes that Sam _probably_ loves him back, given how much he puts up with Bucky's dramatics and the way he hogs all of the blankets and never drinks out a glass, preferring to sully the entire jug of orange juice instead.   
  
But can it really count if they've never said those three little words to each other?  
  
It's not like Bucky hasn't thought about that before, he thinks about saying it at least 500 times a day, when he and Sam are being weirdly domestic, when they're bantering with each other, when Sam's the big spoon providing body heat when even the blankets aren't enough for Bucky.   
  
Those words are on the tip of his tongue when he wakes up in the morning and sees Sam illuminated by the sunshine streaming through the window, soft and angelic.   
  
They're on the tip of his tongue in the dead of night when Sam's rolling over into his arms, seeking comfort after another nightmare.  
  
They're on the tip of his tongue when Sam's looking at him softly, affectionately; when Sam expresses his love without even saying a word.   
  
They've been in love for a while now and Bucky's been too stupid to realize it.   
  
***  
  
It’s the third trope on the list that keeps Bucky up at night.  
  
Bucky’s seen enough rom-coms to know him and Sam have reached the point where the grand gesture of love is supposed to happen.   
  
That he’s supposed to confess his feelings in the middle of torrential rain, and he and Sam would kiss as the rain pours down on them. Or make Sam a mixtape and play it on a boom box under their bedroom window.

_Quickly nixes that idea because it fucking sucks, thanks John Cusack!_

He doesn’t know what his grand gesture ought to be, he’s never had to do something like this before.

Dating in the 40s was easier.  
  
What he does know is that Sam loves romantic comedies, knows that Sam probably bases their quasi-relationship off of one and that means Bucky has to _deliver_. He’s gotta give Sam his fairytale love story or he’ll find his Prince Charming somewhere else.   
  
***  
  
They’re in the park when it happens.   
  
It’s Sam’s idea of a date, laying out on a blanket watching the stars in the night’s sky. It’s so incredibly soft that Bucky’s heart aches a little, and he knows he has to do something soon.   
  
It's probably too short notice to arrange a flash mob to perform 'Closing Time' down at a train station like the stupid movie they watched, but time is of the essence suddenly and he has to do something _right now_.   
  
So with no rain on the radar, no boombox, and no flash mob, Bucky uses the only weapon left in his arsenal: words from his heart.   
  
Shifting off of his back to face Sam directly, Bucky starts.   
  
"I love you."   
  
It's simple and straight to the point and Sam's turning to face Bucky now, an incredulous look etched on his face.   
  
"I've been going crazy thinking about the most perfect, most over the top way to express how much I - I love you", Bucky confesses.   
  
He knows this is a cop-out, that a simple admission of love is _boring_ but damn it, if Bucky's learned anything from those stupid ass movies, besides realism doesn't exist, is that you can't sit on your hands when it comes to true love.   
  
You have to be proactive.   
  
So he continues.   
  
"Nothing about this - about us - makes any sense but I'd be lying to you and to myself if I said my heart didn't belong to you."   
  
Sam hasn't interrupted him or called him an idiot yet so Bucky figures he's on the right track.   
  
There's more, he could practically write a sonnet about how Sam's his first love, his only love. That there's no one else he would rather try this love thing out with. How Sam's a part of him now, a part of his identity. He doesn't know who he would be without Sam here.  
  
But Sam's looking up at him, and smiling that s_mile_ and Bucky can't help himself, leans down and kisses him gently, nipping at his bottom lip.  
  
The words he doesn't say get poured into their kiss; the world could end right now -and it has twice for Bucky- but if each point of his life was leading him to this moment, to the arms of the man he adores more than life itself, Bucky would gladly die a thousand times over.   
  
Just as long as he gets to make it back to Sam.   
  
Just as long as in each lifetime, Sam's still there with his bright eyes and bright smile and bright personality, guiding Bucky back to him like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm.   
  
They finally pull apart and Bucky takes a deep breath, finally able to breathe with the weight of not telling Sam how he feels off his chest.   
  
Despite himself, Bucky's got a smile on his face, wider than Sam's and he can't imagine, not even for a second, of doing this with anyone else.   
  
Sam is it.   
  
***  
  
Even if there's no spontaneous group of onlookers clapping or if doves aren't materializing out of thin air, he and Sam are still getting their happily ever after.   
  
And that's all that matters anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> alt. titled: 'there's something bout your love (that knocks me off my feet)' 
> 
> tumblr: capmackie


End file.
